Richard Burr: quorum call: quorum a senator: the presiding officer: the senator from north carolina. a senator: madam president ask unanimous consent to vitiate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. burr: madam president, i

Richard Burr: need to come to the floor apologize for a misstatement that i made yesterday on the current bill, the kennedy tobacco bill. in y that the c.b.o., the congressional budget office, the?? report on the bill revealed that

Richard Burr: if enacted, smoking rates decline 2% annually. in fact, i was wrong. i have prepared a chart yesterday -- i had prepared a chart yesterday that showed based upon what c.b.o. said, we would reduce by 2016 the smoking rate in the country to

Richard Burr: and also the c.d.c.'s projectionwhich if we did nothing, we would reduce to 15.9%, clearly shows the c.b.o. we're considering wouldn't bring the smoking rate down as much as doing nothing. what i -- the mistake that i

Richard Burr: made yesterday was i assumed the way estimate, that it would reduce smoking 2% per year. and in fact what the c.b.o. report actually said was that it would reduce by 2% years. so, in generous to the current bill that it would reduce smoking to

Richard Burr: a point of figured based upon a 2% per-year reductio in fact, the gap between doing nothing and passing this clearly is much had anticipated. that by doing nothing, we get much more value if the objective

Richard Burr: we grandfather in all the tobacco products that are currently being marketed. and what c.b.o. has concluded is that then you have to permanently figure that about the same rate of americans will continue to smoke because they don't have new options to turn to.

Richard Burr: so, let me make this pledge to my colleagues. if the c.b.o. report that smoking will decrease by a scant 2% under the bill is because of new warning labels a warning labels that are mandated in the bill, then let me say the substitute that senator hagan

Richard Burr: and i the same warning labels and the same graphic warning labels. and if that's what gets the 2% over a ten-reduction, then i'm willing to cosponsorhat bill right now and substitute it for the entire kennedy bill so that

Richard Burr: we get the full 2% that we get in the kennedy bill over ten years of reductions. aimple warning label would be a tremendous improvement over this legislation. $787 million, a new mandate to

Richard Burr: the men and women in our military to pay for it, and it's been portrayed as an effort to reduce the usage of tobacco products with our youth. i covered for all of our colleagues yesterday the fact that when you go down and you look at the c.d.c. proposals to

Richard Burr: states on part of the $280 billion of m.s.a. payments that the industry made to states, that states had spent a pittance of what c.d.c. projected on cessation programs to get people to stop smoking. but more alarming than the fact that states used the

Richard Burr: money to fill budget gaps and build sidewalks rather than to fund programs to get people to stop smoking was the fact that in practically every case of 50 states, the marijuana prevalence use amo the tobacco use prevalence.

Richard Burr: let me say that marijuana usage by our youth is projected by c.d.c. to be higher in practically every state than what they have projected youth prevalence of tobacco use. and it's actually that doesn't necessarily include smokeless. so for my colleagues, including myself, i've spoken on the tact

Richard Burr: that we must keep tobacco out of the hands of our children. it has an age limit. and would agree it has some problems on enforcement. but marijuana's illegal. it's supposed to be forced in every community. it's supposed to be enforced in every state.

Richard Burr: yet, more kids use it than they do tobacco products. madam president, in 1975 congress commissioned the university of michigan to track youth smoking rates. at that time youth smoking was at an all-time high. however, those rates have started to come down and leveled off around 30%, all the way up to 1993. for some unknown reason at the

Richard Burr: time, youth smoking rates started to increase around 1993, peeking to a close at a new all-time high in 1997. in 1998, 12th graders who said that they tried cigarettes in the last 30 days was approximately university of michigan. congress did not really have a

Richard Burr: good sense of why this was happening. opponents of the tobacco industry started blaming all of th of young people by tobacco manufacturers whose sophisticated marketing and advertising campaigns. i heard a senator last night on the floor of the united states

Richard Burr: senate everything on creative marketing techniques. trust me, if they were that effective, every company would be figuring out how to adopt those techniques. the tobacco industry has checkered past twhe marketing and advertising, but what i'm suggesting is it may not all be due to tobacco.

Richard Burr: there is that virtually mirrored that of youth smoking, and it was the increase of use of drugs. illicit drugs by teenagers. sometimes much broader was -- much broader was happening among youth in our society during that time period. the senate's answero smoking

Richard Burr: rate increases was to pass a massive f.d.a. tobacco regulation b that we're here debating today. congress said nothing else would work to save our kids and bring down youth smoking rates. senator kennedy made following remarks during the 1998 senate floor debate to emphasize the need to protect our children.

Richard Burr: let me quote. f.d.a. commissioner david kessler pediatric disease with its onset in adolescence. studies have shown 90% of the current adult smokers began to smoke before the reached the age of 18. it makes sense for congress to do what we can to discourage young americans from starting to smoke during these critical years.

Richard Burr: youth smoking in america has reached epidemic proportions, according to a report last month by the centers for disease control, smoking rates by high school students soared nearly one-third between 1991 and 1997. more than 36% of high school studts smoke.

Richard Burr: a 1991 year high. with youth smoking at crisis levels and still increasing, we cannot rely on halfway measures. congress must use the strongest legislative tool available to reduce smoking as rapidly as possible. senator knedy on the senate floor, may 19, 1998. of course the senate told the american

Richard Burr: of this massive f.d.a. tobacco regulation bill back in 1998 contained the strongest legislative tools available to address youth smoking issues. well, madam president, congress did not pass the f.d.a. bill that we're debating today. what's happened to youth smoking rates? they decreased since 1998 to its

Richard Burr: current all-time lows. talking about record lows over a 34-year period. in 1998 we were told by some in the senate youth sking rates would not come down absent a major bureaucratic expansion over tobacco at the f.d.a. those senators were wrong. today we continue this same debate over basically the same

Richard Burr: bill, and we're debating this as if nothing else changed. obviously something's working that we're doing across this country, and it has nothing to do with what congress is talking about doing. it has to do with the passage of the master settlement agreement, the advertising restrictions, awareness campaigns, education.

Richard Burr: none of these things are enhanced in h.r. 1256, the kennedy bill. it's a keeping kids from smoking. the c.b.o. recently stated that if it were enacted, youth smoking would reduce over the ten-year period. 2%. excuse me. 11% for youth. 2% overall.

Richard Burr: according to the university of michigan youth smoking rates have declined by 5% over the last five years and 16% over the last ten. it is an indication of how youth smoking rates will go over the next ten years. we've actually slowed the decline by passing this bill. let me say that again. we slowed the decline of youth

Richard Burr: usage by actually bill. it's the university of michigan. office, all very reputable agencies. i know i've got a colleag that's on the floor that wants to speak, and i'm going to yield the floor to him. colleagues, we're talking about

Richard Burr: a massive expansion of regulation for the f.d.a. regulation over it has a host of agencies currently that regulate tobacco. it is the most regulated in the united states of america. and now we want to centralize that regulation into the f.d.a.

Richard Burr: let me read the f.d.a.'s mission statement. the f.d.a.'s responsible for protecting the public health by assuring that the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, cosmetics and products that

Richard Burr: one, in protecting public you're not health when you allow cigarettes to be sold. so the fact that we've constructed a bill that grandfathers every existing product but impossible to bring to reduced-risk products that allow americans to give up the

Richard Burr: cigare something was right. that it will slow the reduction in smoking rates. we do nothing for disease and death. we do more for by not passing legislation than we do by passing legislation.

Richard Burr: if t in fact honest and the effort is to reduce usage, then the members of the united states sena should do nothing. now, hopefully, tonight, madam president, senator hagan and i will introduce a

Richard Burr: substitute, a substitute that brings as much regulator authority to an entity outside of the food and drug administration but one under secretary services. why? because i spent5 years in washington tryingo protect the integrity and the gold standard of the f.d.a., so that when every american goes to bed at night and they take that

Richard Burr: prescription that ty got from a pharmacis doctor, that they don't have any question as it's safe or, two, it's going to work. that when they go to the hospital and all of a sudden the do that they're goingo have and there is a medical device involved, they're not wondering is this going to work? could it hurt me? because the f.d.a. has already said it's safe and it' effective.

Richard Burr: that as wering on this new line of buy biologic products that are going to cure terminal illness that are going to do it in a way that hurts our health because the f.d.a.'s gold standard is in place. that when we go to the store and

Richard Burr: we buy food, we're going to be assured that it's safe, something we haven't to do for the last few years. spinach contamination. salmonella and peanut butter. the list goes onnd on and why with an agency that's struggling mission, would we ask them to take on a product that in

Richard Burr: legislation we say we know you can't prove safety and efficacy. but on that, we want you to turn your head. we want mission for jurisdiction we're going to give you. but for everything e you to apply that gold standard. we want you to ensure drug safety, device safety, food

Richard Burr: safety, but not with tobacco. well, to my colleagues, very si read the bill, you for this bill. you want to reduce youth consumption of tobacco? it's real simple. we reduce it faster by doing nothing. again, i think there will be a substitute that all members can vote for tonight.

Richard Burr: it accomplishes further reductions of youth usage because we don't constrict less harmful products in the future from coming to the market. we don't lock an adult population into only be smokers because they're only addicted to nicotine. we give them options like sweden

Richard Burr: has given their citizens where they reduced adu smoking at incredible rates because of innovative new products that deliver nick mean it a way tha particular teen in a way -- nicotine in a way that reduces the risk of disease and reduces the rate of death. if the objecti here is to

Richard Burr: reduce disease, toeduce death, to reduce youth usage, then i would encourage my colleagues tonight when senator hagan and i introduce a substitute, listen very carefully, support the substitute. but at the end of the day if your objective is to reduce